Some Unknown Members
of the Wold Newton Familyor“Good Heavens, Holmes!
Those are the Branches of a Giant Family Tree!”

by Jess Nevins

(with thanks to Dennis
Power for a suggestion which improved the article)

This is the second of a series of articles
derived from a diary, found in Angleton, Texas, detailing a previously-unknown
set of relations to the Wold Newton Family. The first article, "You
weren't nuthin' but a hound dog," explored some of the canines affected
by the fall of the Wold Newton meteor. The articles' author is a respected
scholar and raconteur who, for legal and safety reasons, I refer to as
"MN."

Part 2: The Carters of
Virginia: A Tragedy

Once upon a time there was a mighty hero
from Virginia named “Carter.” His feats were renowned, and his name remains
potent even today, several decades after his adventures were first published.
He was exceptionally strong, even by the standards of the Wold Newton Family,
and was a fighter widely respected (and feared) by those who knew him and
knew of him. His adventures were numerous, and his enemies fantastic and
vile.

He was not John Carter, Warlord of Mars
and Prince of Helium. He was John Carter’s nephew, and for decades he was
the more celebrated—rightfully so—of the pair.

The story of the Carter cousins, however,
begins not in the 19th Century but far beyond that, a century and more,
in Richmond, Virginia. An old and respected family there, the Trouts, had
settled in Virginia in the 17th century, a James Trout helping Thomas Stegg
establish a trading post at the then-unnamed site at the fall of the James
River. Trout had taken a wife with him from England, and they settled in
the area and raised several children. The Trout family prospered and became
a very respectable Old Dominion family, several members being present in
1752 at the founding of Richmond.

In 1750 Ronald Trout, Jr., was born; he
was the son of Ronald Trout and Mary Evans. In 1773 Ronald Jr. married
Laurelyn Smith. The following year Ronald began his activities with the
anti-British Virginia Convention. Laurelyn gave birth to two children:
Whitney Smith Trout, born in 1781, and Joseph Trout, born in 1784.

The shorter and easier of the two Trout
branches to describe begins with Joseph. Joseph's son, Henry (1809-1864),
moved to Salem, Virginia, in 1830, to further the family business. Henry's
grandson, Leo Trout (1858?-?), was the youngest of three and saw no way
by which to make his fortune in Virginia, and so left Salem, striking out
for California in 1878. While traveling along the National Road near the
village of Waycross he was hurt in an accident. While recuperating in Waycross
he met Eva Shawnessy, and decided to stay in Waycross. Eventually they
married and gave the world that most underrated of all writers, Kilgore
Trout.1

The more complicated Trout branch begins
with Whitney Smith Trout. Whitney, a saucy and spirited blonde with her
mother's wit and beauty and her father's drive, was the hit of Richmond
society after her 1799 cotillion, and her hand was much competed for. Trout
refused to be courted by any of the young men of Richmond and Virginia
society, instead allowing herself to be swept off her feet by Jack Carter,
a young adventurer of unknown provenance.2
They were married later that year, to general rejoicing and in 1800, when
Whitney discovered she was pregnant, it was thought that a great family
was in the making, one that would bring still more honor to the Trout name
and would establish the Carters as powers in the state.

Whitney gave slow and agonizing birth to
three children over the space of three days and then slipped into unconsciousness,
dying without ever awakening or bidding farewell to her stunned and grief-stricken
husband. It was later said that the energy and life she would have spread
over a dozen children and twenty years she spent on a pair of children,
with the third being “normal” but in truth an afterthought.

Again, I will begin with the simplest line
first, although "simplest" is a relative term in this case. The youngest
son of Jack Carter and Whitney Trout was Nate Carter (1800-1865), and the
extraordinary abilities present in his brothers were entirely absent in
him. Modern, psychology-conscious researchers might wonder if Nate felt
any jealousy or insecurity towards his more noted brothers. If so, the
only evidence of these feelings came later in his life, when his devotion
to his wife Christina suffered for a moment. As an adult Nate took over
management of the farms that had been his mother’s wedding present from
her father and amassed a significant amount of wealth, making the Carters
one of the richest families in America. His brothers were too busy adventuring
to do something so prosaic as live the life of a gentleman farmer, so the
job of maintaining the family fortune fell to Nate. (This may have been
another source of resentment for Nate, but if so there is no recorded evidence
of it) He built an enormous estate, "Carter Hall," on the outskirts of
Richmond. Nate and Christina had a son, Benjamin, in 1832. In 1853, however,
something happened to strain the marriage between Nate and Christina. Records
are scarce on the subject, and Christina's diary (located by MN at the
Carter Family Archives in Richmond, VA) has had several pages removed from
it, but an 1859 entry contains these two passages: "that woman…has finally
left Richmond" and "our previous difficulties have, praise the Lord, receded."
Birth records show that a "Martha Carter" was born in Richmond, at a pauper's
hospital, in 1854; no name is given for Martha's mother.

Benjamin (1832-1926) maintained the family
fortune and farms, and married Emily Watson, the daughter of another old
Richmond family, in 1856. Their twin sons, Jeremy (1857-1930) and Walter,
(1857-1920?), were born the following year, and Nellie (1860-1916) and
Warwick (1863-1922) followed soon thereafter. We will return to Ben’s children
presently.

Martha Carter (1854-1936) must have endured
a difficult childhood, being born out of wedlock to a single mother and
being denied the comfort of her father's family and home. The sufferings
she undoubtedly went through, both as an infant and then as a child during
and after the Civil War, must have been considerable. However, no record
exists of Martha Carter, with the exception of the birth record, from between
her birth and her marriage to Chris Carter in 1876, and so we can only
conjecture about her personality and upbringing. The circumstances behind
this marriage would undoubtedly make for interesting reading; however,
no account was ever given of how Chris and Martha met.

Chris Carter was a child of the Carters
of Arkham, Massachusetts. The Carters of Arkham trace their heritage back
to the Norman Conquest. A Carter fought in the First Crusade, being captured
by the Saracens somewhere near the Tell `Asur and learning strange secrets
from them. Another Carter, Sir Randolph, is reported to have studied magic
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Yet another, Edmund Carter, was
charged with being a witch by the authorities in Salem, Massachusetts,
in 1692, but escaped hanging through means still unknown. He emigrated
to the tangled woods and dark hills around Arkham and built the sprawling
family hall where succeeding generations lived.

Edmund's great-grandson, Jonathan (1790-1846),
fathered two children, Christopher (1814-1891) and Edmund (1816-1904).
Christopher was drawn to certain obscure and arcane fields of studies and
grew grey and old early in life. His brother Edmund married (MN has so
far been unable to discover the name of Edmund's wife) and fathered two
sons: George (1850-1882) and Chris--the same Chris who married Martha Carter.

We can only imagine the household that
Chris and Martha made for each other: he, from a proper and ancient lineage,
stuffy in the way that only Yankee bluebloods can be but also haunted in
the way that only a Yankee from Arkham (or Innsmouth) can be; and she,
whose blood as haughty as his but whose personal history was far more desperate.
Made worse for both of them was their living quarters, which were the Carter
family estate in Arkham. How Martha, a child of the South, must have reacted
on first seeing the many portraits of the Carter family staring gloomily
down at her and on first enduring the bone-chilling winters of Arkham (so
much colder, curiously, than those of the rest of Massachusetts) can only
be imagined.

Martha and Chris married in 1876. George
Carter died in 1882 under strange circumstances. (The Carters of Arkham
were not receptive to requests for information, especially about George
and his son; MN has included several curt letters from the Carters denying
him access to their family archives and threatening him with legal action
if he attempts further investigations) George had married in 1873 (his
wife's name is not known), and their son, born in 1874, was adopted by
Martha and Chris.

This son was Randolph Carter, and his future
life, from the strange event in 1883 which gave him predictive powers to
his death in 1928, has been explored in depth by Howard Lovecraft.

The second son of Jack Carter and Whitney
Trout was John Carter. John (1800-1898) led an interesting life, as his
biographer, Edgar Burroughs, has shown. Unfortunately for Burroughs and
for future researchers, much of Carter’s early life is obscured because
of Carter's "amnesia." No clear reasons are given for his amnesia, whether
in his ten-volume (auto)biography or in those documents MN was able to
uncover. Mr. P.J. Farmer has speculated that Carter somehow acquired an
elixir of immortality similar to Tarzan's. MN's researches show this not
to be true. However, if Carter's extraordinary longevity (more on which
following) was derived from this formula, it might also explain the brain
damage that Carter exhibited later in life.3

Carter apparently left home at an early
age. He may have simply lived the life of a rich young Southern gentleman,
but his references to his "only means of livelihood, fighting," and his
description of himself as a "soldier of fortune" lead MN to believe that
Carter may have sold his swords and guns freelance starting at a young
age, perhaps as early as 1821.4
When he realized that he was not aging beyond the age of 30 is not known,
nor is there any record of the reaction of those outside the family to
his remarkable vitality and youthfulness. Those within the family had the
example of John's brother as well as their father, Jack,5
and so most likely found it normal.

When the Civil War began John enlisted
in the Confederate cavalry and by war's end had earned himself a commission
as a Captain. John's memories of the war, however, do not seem to have
been fond ones,6 and for
good reason. He'd had to suffer through the heartache of the family schism
between his eldest brother and the rest of the Carter family at the beginning
of the war. (More on this following) In April 1865 had come the horrible
news that the Union forces had sacked Richmond, and during its fall Carter
Hall had been taken and razed, Jack and Nate Carter dying on its doorstep,
swords in hand. And, finally, John had suffered through the defeat of the
Confederacy during the war, something his fighting man's pride must have
found intolerable.

At war's end he was, in his own words,
"masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood, fighting,
gone." He chose to go prospecting in the American Southwest.7

What happened after that has been covered
in volume one of Carter's (auto)biography, A Princess of Mars. Carter
spent ten years fighting and then loving on Mars, returning to Earth in
1876. Once back he discovered that the gold strike he and his friend, Captain
James K. Powell, had discovered had made him rich. More, the gold had helped
restore the Carter family fortunes, and had led to Carter Hall being rebuilt
by Ben Carter. We can only imagine the joy felt by Ben and John at their
reunion, both undoubtedly having thought the other was dead. Ben most likely
offered the use of Carter Hall to John, but John refused, for reasons of
his own, and bought an estate on the Hudson River in New York state and
settled down there. In 1886 he returned to Mars again, and his body was
found in his house and interred in the Carter family mausoleum in Richmond.
In 1898 he returned to Earth, summoned his nephew Walter to him, and gave
Walter the manuscripts comprising volumes 2, 3, and 4 of his (auto)biography.8
Carter was then reinterred in the mausoleum and passed beyond the ken of
his family.

The eldest son of Jack Carter and Whitney
Trout was Simon Carter (1800-1886). Simon was born first and was therefore
treated by Jack and Whitney as their oldest son. That he was born only
a few hours before John (eager as ever for new experiences and adventures,
John reportedly pushed his way out of the womb without any help from Whitney)
was irrelevant; he was born first, and so was the oldest son.

Simon, nicknamed "Sim," was like his brother
John in many ways. Sim had extraordinary vitality and longevity, appearing
to be only thirty for over sixty years. Sim was very strong, very willful,
and enjoyed adventures and fights as much as John. But Sim's moral compass
was truer than John's.10
John spent the decades before the Civil War working as a mercenary. Simon
spent those years working as a consulting detective, with various agencies
and on his own.

Simon’s idyll–for such it was, Simon enjoying
himself far more as a detective than he ever had in Carter Hall, surrounded
by Southern luxury–came to an end in 1861 with the declaration of war between
the Confederacy and the United States of America. Simon was faced with
a choice many Americans of that time had to make: which side to fight for.
That choice was an agonizing one for many in the border states, often tearing
apart families.

This proved to be the case with the Carters
of Richmond, but for Simon there was no choice. He had worked in New York
City, Boston, and Washington, DC as a detective, and undoubtedly worked
beside emancipated slaves and Freemen, learning that, contrary to what
he had been taught as a child in Richmond, those of African descent were
not subhuman, but were just like him, only with darker skin. Simon most
likely learned that race hatred was wrong and evil, and there is some scant
evidence that he had a hand in helping escaped slaves make their way to
safety in the North. His feelings for his family, whose slave holdings
were considerable and were the source of much of their wealth, must have
been conflicted but ultimately condemning.

Simon chose to fight for the Union and
returned to Carter Hall to inform his family of his decision. There are
no surviving records of Simon’s announcement and the heated, furious argument
that followed; most of the Carter diaries were destroyed in the fire which
leveled Carter Hall. What was said will never be known for sure. But the
end result was quickly known to all. Simon was disowned by Jack and told
never to return to Carter Hall. The following day Nate and John gave orders
to the servants and slaves of Carter Hall never to mention his name again
and to remove all of his effects and possessions from Carter Hall and burn
or bury them. Simon, from that point forward, was as one dead to the Carters.11

Simon left Carter Hall in a cold fury,
saying nothing to his relatives as he left but thanking the family servants
for their long service. Simon’s movements after leaving Carter Hall and
his activities during the war remain a secret. Repeated requests for his
war records filed under the Freedom of Information Act have been denied
on the grounds that the files remain “classified” for reasons of “National
Security.”12 An interesting
account from the New Orleans Tribune mentions a strange “submarine-like
craft” creating havoc with the ship’s attempting to break the Union blockade
around the city. A Confederate spy on-board the Union ship New Boston
was present when the submarine met up with the New Boston and the
sub’s captain, “Craig McKenzie,” his first mate (who seemed to be an escaped
slave), and another man boarded the New Boston. The third man did
not introduce himself but the description matches that of Simon Carter.

At some point during the war Simon was
active in England, perhaps attempting to stop ships from smuggling food
and/or arms to the Confederacy. While there he met Winifred Ludlow, of
the Worcestershire Ludlows. Winnie's own lineage is not without note. Although
this was never widely known in Worcestershire, and was in fact hushed up,
Eugenia Ludlow, the "maiden" aunt of Johnny Ludlow and Tod Ludlow (best
known for Mrs. Henry Wood's friendship with them and chronicling of their
adventures), was briefly involved with Jesse, the 4th Duke Greystoke,
during one of the (many) periods in which Greystoke's wife Arabella Howard
was enceinte. Jesse was called to Worcestershire on business and was attracted
to Eugenia. She, for her part, was too busy enjoying her youth and beauty
to want to be tied down, and a quick affair with a handsome and well-connected
nobleman. Their brief relationship led to Winifred, the inheritor of the
Wold Newton genes.

How long Winnie and Sim knew each other,
the circumstances under which they met, what drew them together—these facts,
such as they are known, and the story of the brief, passionate, doomed
romance between Winnie and Sim deserve a biography of their own, or perhaps
a novel or opera. Suffice it to say that their time together was brief,
but like Jack Carter and Whitney Trout before them they lived a lifetime
within the space of two years.

Winnie and Sim returned to the U.S. in
1865, entering through New York City and registering with the officials
there as “Simon and Mrs. Carter.” Winnie was already pregnant. Simon brought
her to Washington, where he met briefly with certain government officials,
and then returned with her to New York City. For the next four months he
worked as the sole owner and operator of the “Carter Detective Agency”
(motto: “We never sleep”). Then, later in the year, Winnie gave birth to
a young boy who she and Sim had agreed would be named “Nicholas.” Winnie
died a day later, probably from complications from the childbirth.

Simon’s friends seem to have agreed that
it was following Winnie’s birth that Sim finally began showing his age.
In the years preceding the war and during the war Simon had been uncannily
energetic and young-seeming; like his brother John, he had been, to the
eye, unchanged despite his years, looking closer to thirty than to his
true age. But within a few weeks of Winnie’s death lines and crows-feet
began to appear on Sim’s face, and his hair began showing streaks of grey.
By the time Nicholas was a teenager Simon looked every day of his 70-plus
years, and was called, by those who knew him, “Old Sim.”13

Nicholas never spoke much to his friends
about his childhood—it was one of the few subjects on which he was reticent—and
Simon’s friends seem not to have been privy to the particulars of Nicholas’
upbringing. Based on the available facts, however, it appears that Simon’s
goal, in raising Nicholas, was to create a man who would be as great a
man as possible and as great an American as possible. Perhaps this was
a reaction on Simon’s part to his estrangement from his family: “I will
make a man so awe-inspiring, so dedicated to the ideals of freedom, liberty—the
ideals we fought for during the War--and so capable of fighting for Good
that my brothers and father will know that they were wrong.” Perhaps Simon’s
reaction came from a broken heart: “I will raise my son to be a perfect
man, so that his mother’s memory is properly honored.” Or perhaps Simon,
beginning to feel the weight of his years, decided to make a son who would
carry on his own ideals and fight for them when he was gone. We shall never
know the answer to this question, however.

What is known is that Sim devoted the next
twenty-one years of his life to training his son, making the physical and
mental development of Nicholas his primary occupation. (Sim continued to
work as a consulting detective, but it was no longer foremost in his mind)
In the words of one critic, Sim trained Nicholas "in every possible area
of knowledge that might conceivably have to do with solving crime, including
the sciences, various languages, art and physiology." Nicholas' body was
similarly honed, until he could easily lift well over twelve-hundred pounds,14
run inexhaustibly, distort his face until it was unrecognizable even to
Sim,15 and perfectly mimic
voices, accents, and sounds.

The final result was a man who at the age
of 21 was the first true Superman, anticipating Clark Savage Jr. by a generation.16
Few physical feats were beyond him, and all there was of detective science
and its contributory fields of knowledge thundered through his head. Unlike
his Uncle John, however, his moral education had not been stinted on by
Simon, and he was keenly devoted to fighting for justice and the underdog,
and for all races, not just the white man. Nicholas could have chosen any
profession and excelled at it, but he decided to emulate his adored father17
and become a private investigator.

Nicholas’ childhood ended18
in his twenty-first year when, during his first case, Old Sim was murdered.
Nicholas solved the crime and saw to it that his father’s killer was sent
to jail, but the effect on Nicholas’ psyche must have been considerable,
and far more traumatic than described in his (auto)biography.19

Nicholas, of course, went on to become
Nick Carter, the single most successful detective in American history and
one whose exploits are second in number only to Sexton Blake’s. Nick Carter’s
story does not end there, however, and there is, sadly, still further reason
for the label of “Tragedy” to be applied to the history of the Carters
of Virginia.

Nick began working as a private detective
in New York City, but his skill was such that quickly became very successful
and famous not just in NYC but around the world, and within a few months
was being consulted by and summoned to help wealthy businessmen, Presidents,
Kings, and various foreign potentates. His name became a byword for diligence
and discretion, and he was welcome everywhere. It was during this time,
between 1886 and 1890, that he befriended Phileas Fogg, the famous explorer
and adventurer; it is thought that they met at one of the van der Luyden’s
parties. Fogg and Carter hit it off famously, and while they did not often
see each other in the next decade, when they did encounter each other the
conversation resumed as if the intervening weeks or months had not existed.20

Nick also acquired, during this time, a
set of helpers, very similar to Clark Savage Jr.'s; for more information
on them, see Appendix A below. They and Phileas were Nick's first real
friends, and we can only imagine at the need for companionship that they
filled. But one thing was still absent from Nick's life: romantic love.
This he found only a few short years after he began his detective work,
in 1892. Unfortunately, as with so much else in his life, Nick was not
destined to be happy for very long in his relationships with women.

The accounts, published in issue #68 of
the Nick Carter Detective Library, speak of a wife, “Ethel,” who
Nick marries. In the very next chapter of his (auto)biography there is
an account of her murder at the hands of one of Nick’s many enemies. Only
a few months later, an account speaks of Nick’s dead wife “Edith,” and
for the chapters following that is her name. The casual researcher may
be forgiven for wondering what took place. Had some typographical errors
slipped into Nick’s (auto)biography? Had Nick somehow forgotten or changed
the name of his wife? Had Nick’s biographer somehow made a mistake?

The truth is far sadder than any of those
possibilities. Extensive research into the marriage records of the New
York City Archives by MN as well as careful readings of the New York
Times for 1892 have revealed that Nick Carter married twice in the
space of three months in 1892, and that both wives were murdered by Nick’s
archenemy, Dr. Quartz.

Nick’s first wife was Ethel Ackermann (1869-1892).
She was the daughter of the notorious Western scofflaw and detective “Deadwood
Dick” Ackermann. (Ackermann’s history will be explored in some depth in
the article following this one. Also see footnote 25 below) More information
than that, however, is hard to come by, in large part because of the primary
source for information on Ethel and Nick’s marriage to her: the Nick
Carter Detective Library.

As mentioned, some editing took place in
the Library and in New York Weekly, at Nick’s behest. Some
lines of dialogue were removed and/or rewritten for various reasons. Unfortunately,
it seems that some elements of Nick’s personal history were also edited
in a similar fashion. The exact dates of Nick’s relationship with Ethel,
their marriage, and her death–these are unknown, and the Nick Carter
Detective Library (NCDL) is not reliable for our purposes. MN’s search
for Ethel’s death certificate in the New York City Archives did not turn
up anything, and there are only two external (to the NCDL) references to
her passing. The first is a two-line ad in the September 1st issue expressing
sympathies to “N.C.” The second is found in an interview with Dr. John
“Jack” Quartz in the Sing-Sing Beacon on July 30th, 1930. Quartz
is, for the most part, incoherent and in need of heavy medication, but
one statement draws the eye:

Interviewer: “What can you tell
us about your clashes with Nick Carter?”Quartz: (drools) “One wife for every conviction!
One wife for every conviction!”

The only implication that can be drawn from
this is that Dr. Quartz was the man responsible for the deaths of Ethel
Ackermann and Nick’s second wife. That Quartz was a vivisectionist, and
had extensive hypnotic abilities, conjures up visions of Ethel’s death
that are best not thought of.

Nick’s second wife was Edith Blake (1867-1892).
Blake was the daughter of a British factory owner who was traveling to
New York City in the fall of 1891 with her friends when her ship, the Providence,
was kidnaped by Ordway the Unaccountable Crook and his gang. Ordway, one
of Carter’s recurring enemies, rounded up the crew of the Providence
and its captain, Owen Kettle, and imprisoned them in the brig. Luckily
for all involved, Carter was informed of Ordway’s whereabouts through his
contacts in the underworld and tracked down the Providence. He arrived
just as Kettle led the escape from the brig, and together the two captured
Ordway and his men. Following that experience Edith and Nick kept in touch
and became friends.21 It
stands to reason that as Nick’s closest female friend Edith would have
been the person Nick turned to for comfort in the lonely days and weeks
following Ethel’s death. Many widows and widowers fall in love (or believe
they do) with their comforters following the deaths of loved ones, and
Nick, despite his great abilities, was only human. For her part, Edith
likely had a crush on Nick from the first moment they met; he was brave,
famous, gentlemanly, well-educated, articulate, and vulnerable, all things
designed to appeal to a woman of her class. Their love affair seems to
have been fairly quick, and their wedding the result of impulse, rather
than a carefully planned act. There’s no record of this marriage; it was
likely done in secret, perhaps in Niagara Falls or in Canada, as a second
marriage so quickly after being widowed would cause no small amount of
scandal, something Nick would undoubtedly have been aware of.

We can only imagine the devastation felt
by Nick when Edith fell prey to Quartz a short time after their marriage.
Nick never mentioned it to his adopted son, Chickering “Chick” Valentine,
and the NCDL is silent on the subject. The impact, however, must have been
considerable.22

Nick’s life following the death of his
wives is fairly well reported, although we must again advise against taking
the comments credited to him in his (auto)biography as verbatim. Nick’s
success and fame grew, and after a brief retirement (see Appendix A) returned
to work and became still more successful.

Then, in 1907, Nick discovered, in the
course of a case, a hidden city in the foothills of the Andes somewhere
in southern Bolivia. The inhabitants were a previously-unknown race of
mixed Indian and Norse descent. They were led by Queen Zaidee, who forced
Nick to become a gladiator before he forced her into a swordfight with
him. He defeated her, which by the rules of the city meant that he was
to marry her. He was unnerved by this, and soon afterwards is approached
by Zaidee’s younger sister Carma, who is aggressively and physically sexual
with him. He barely escapes from being forced to have intercourse with
her, but a version of the Stockholm Syndrome set in and he fell in love
with her, and she with him. Carma helped Nick and his friends escape from
the city, and on the steamer ride home from South America Nick announced
to his friends that he and Carma were to be married. The following chapter
of Nick Carter’s (auto)biography, published in issue #531 of New Nick
Carter Weekly, contains no mention of Carma or of a “Mrs. Nick Carter,”
nor does any following issue.

Needless to say, this is a strange story.
However, if we take into account the editorial control exercised by Nick
Carter over the chapters of his (auto)biography and the undoubted willingness
of his editors to cooperate with him, all becomes clear. (The following
conclusions have been extensively documented by MN after a number of trips
to archives and various locations in Virginia and North Carolina)

Nick Carter and Carma were married on-board
the steamer carrying them back to the United States, the marriage being
performed by the steamer’s Captain. As soon as the steamer docked in New
York City, Nick and Carma left, saying goodbye to a mystified Chick Carter
and to his other friends. A month later Nick returned alone, and despite
repeated questions from a very curious Chick Carter and Pat Murphy refused
to say anything about where he had been. He apologized profusely, but flatly
refused to discuss the subject. For the next three years Nick would regularly
disappear for approximately one week every month, leaving and returning
without a word. He consistently refused to say where he went to and would
not take any cases which would interfere with his “vacations.”

Nick was visiting his wife and children.
Again, we have no solid proof of what went through Nick’s mind, but it
is easy enough to guess. He had lost two wives to horrible violence, and
after fifteen long, lonely years and found someone else that he cared for.23
He would certainly take every step to see that it did not happen again.

MN has reconstructed Nick’s movements from
1907 to 1910 and searched through the Deeds records in a number of counties
in Virginia and North Carolina and discovered a five hundred square acre
holding credited to a “Mr. Nicholas Trout” (note the use of his family
name) in Moore County, North Carolina, along the Beaver and Cranes Creek
northwest of Lobelia. MN visited this location and found the ruins of what
had once upon a time been a well-appointed and very homey house. This was
Nick’s and Carma’s home. Nick brought her to a remote location far away
from civilization and had a house built for her, a home that would be large
enough and comfortable enough and most of all safe enough for her to live
in comfort. In this place she would be safe, and he could relax and not
worry about his wife dying in the same way that his previous two wives
had.

It was in this house that Carma gave birth
to her two children, Simon (1908-?) and Richard (1909-?). Life seems to
have been idyllic there, and Nick might well have been contemplating retirement,
until the day came when he was informed of Dr. Quartz’s escape from prison,
aided by his female assistant, “Zanoni the Female Wizard.” Did he have
a premonition of doom, as he began tracking them and found that they had
headed south from New York? Or was he unsuspecting until he reached the
borders of Moore County? We will never know.

Nick found his house partially destroyed
by fire and his wife dead, surrounded by the bodies of a number of Quartz’s
gang members. According to the members of the Lobelia Fire Department,
who arrived on the scene soon after Nick did, Nick was found cradling his
wife’s body. When asked what happened, Nick said, in a heartbreaking monotone,
that his wife was skilled with the sword and would not allow herself to
be victimized in the way that Ethel and Edith had been. She fought and
died, heaping her dead around her in the way that her Viking ancestors
had. And she fought well enough and long enough to drive off Quartz and
Zanoni (who were captured in Chapel Hill the following day by Nick24)
before they could discover Simon or Richard.

What happened was carefully concealed by
Nick, who did not want Quartz or Zanoni to discover that they had not finished
their job. Nick decided that he had to give up Simon and Richard. He could
not raise them in New York City, not with any degree of safety; the news
that Nick Carter had two small children, with no apparent mother, would
not only bring scandal to Nick’s name (something he undoubtedly cared little
about) but would also attract more unwelcome attention by Nick’s enemies.

So he gave the two children up for adoption.
He would not turn them over to just anyone, however. Someone like Nick
Carter would choose only the best families to trust the care of his two
children to. The first family was the Calhouns, a Moore County family.
The Calhouns were very poor, but were of exceptionally high moral caliber,
and Nick had no doubts about turning his child over to them. Simon was
raised by them as their own, and grew up never knowing who his biological
father was. Nick, for his part, discretely sent money to the Calhouns and
followed Simon’s progress via the Calhoun’s oldest son Jack. Jack (1891-1962)
became a policeman and then entered the U.S. Rangers in the early 1920s;
he was only too happy to tell Nick about his baby brother. Simon grew up
thinking of himself as Calhoun and married a local girl. Their son, John
(1927-?), became a figure of some note, his adventures being chronicled
by Manly Wade Wellman.

Nick took a different path with Richard,
perhaps figuring that a vengeful criminal would not think to look at both
ends of the social spectrum to find Nick’s children. To that end he approached
his old friend Phileas Fogg and asked for help, on the grounds that only
Phileas would best know who was trustworthy enough to take care of Richard
and who would be safe from attacks by Nick’s enemies.

Phileas’ choice was a surprising one. He
chose his sister Isis. Isis had recently married the wealthy Wall Street
broker Alvin H. Benson, but had so far been unable to conceive. Isis was
desperate for a child, and Benson was quite wealthy; excellent conditions
for the proper upbringing of a child. Isis was given Richard and told not
to ask any questions. She did not, instead concentrating on raising Richard
in the right way. Richard was too young, at the time of his adoption, to
remember Nick and Carma in more than very vague terms, and quickly forgot
about them, so well did Isis raise him. Richard’s life was not a placid
one, however; it was marked with violence in much the same way that his
biological father’s was. His father, Alvin, was murdered in 1926,
in a case which attracted a great deal of attention in New York City, not
the least of which from the famous gentleman detective Philo Vance. In
1938 Richard’s wife Alicia and daughter Alice were killed in an “accident”
meant to murder him. This tragedy led to the Richard taking on the role
of the “Avenger,” the crime fighter whose exploits were chronicled by Kenneth
Robeson.

Nick Carter had no more children, and the
Carters alive today exhibit none of the extraordinary abilities of their
ancestors. Considering what those men and women suffered, the current set
of Carters might well consider that a good thing.

Next, in Part Three:"Reach
For Yuh Genealogical Charts, Stranger!" An Extraordinary Family of the
Wold West

Appendix A

Nick Carter was, like Clark Savage Jr.,
assisted by a number of individuals in his war on crime. They were, if
anything, even more varied than Savage’s, and while not so world-renowned
they were certainly capable of performing the tasks that Carter asked of
them.

The first was Chickering “Chick” Valentine,
a 14-year-old ranch hand in Nevada who Nick met early in his career. The
pair were taken with each other, and Chick accompanied Nick back to New
York City, where he became Nick’s boy assistant and eventually his adoptive
son. He was Nick’s constant companion, and the only one to be with Nick
from the very beginning of his career, in 1886, to the recorded end of
his career in 1927.25

Nick’s valet was Peter Brown, an aging
retainer who had served Simon before helping Nick. After Peter died, in
1905, Joseph, his son, took over as Nick’s domestic assistant.

The individual who helped Nick on the most
cases besides Chick Valentine was Patrick “Patsy” Murphy, an Irish bootblack
from New York City who had originally been summoned to help Nick for one
case only but was later retained by Nick on a permanent basis.

In 1897 or 1898 (the surviving records
are unclear on the exact date) two new assistants arrived to help Nick:
Nellie and Warwick Carter. These two were, as previously mentioned, the
son and daughter of Ben Carter, Nick’s cousin. How they came to work for
Nick remains something of a mystery, as there is no evidence that Nick
ever contacted his extended family or attempted a reconciliation with him.
Nick had been told by his father that he had no extended family, that Simon
was an only child and that his father and mother had died before Nick was
born. The last, at least, was true, but the rest was a lie. Nick, a skilled
detective, undoubtedly discovered that his father had deceived him when
he attempted to discover his forebears. The lack of knowledge on the part
of Ben Carter or John Carter about Nick’s existence says much about Nick’s
opinion of his uncles and family; like his father, he was no doubt appalled
at their actions before and during the Civil War. However, Nick undoubtedly
arranged matters so that they became aware of the possibility of work with
him. That they did not help him for longer or more often than they did
indicates that, perhaps, their attitudes towards African-Americans was
not far removed from their father’s, and that Nick had no use for men or
women whose attitudes were so limited.

Other helpers included: Ida Jones, a somewhat
mysterious and distinctive figure, intelligent and capable, whose lengthy
disappearance in the late 1890s and early 1900s will be addressed in a
future article; the students in Nick’s “detective school for boys,” including
Bob Ferret, Jack Burton, Buff Hutchinson, and “Roxy the Flowergirl,” a
street woman who entered the school against the wishes of nearly everyone
involved and became its best graduate.

Finally, Nick was helped for several years
by “Ten-Ichi,” the “son of the Mikado.” This figure could only have been
Hirohito, who went on to become the Emperor of Japan during World War Two.
Unfortunately, a fuller examination of “Ten-Ichi” will have to wait for
a future article.

Appendix B

A close examination of the Clark Savage
Jr. and Nick Carter reveal some interesting similarities--enough, in fact,
that one might almost think to see the hand of design.

Both of their fathers were extremely accomplished
men from distinguished families.Both were the only child.Both of their raised and trained to be
supermen.Both were taught special forms of exercise
in order to make their bodies superior to ordinary humans’.Both were bronze-skinned.Both had grey eyes.Both lost their fathers at relatively
young ages.Both never knew their mothers.Both were internationally renowned crimefighters.Both had a capable set of assistants and
friends (See Appendix A).Both formed sophisticated schools at which
doing good was taught. (Admittedly, Clark Savage Jr. reformed criminals,
while Nick Carter taught would-be detectives)Both kept a wide array of weapons and
gadgets (many of which they’d invented) on their bodies at all times.Both had a colorful, grotesque, and evil
menagerie of villains who bedeviled them.Both had extremely problematic relationships
with women.

Footnotes

1
More detail on Trout, as well as on Shawnessy's ancestors, Thomas Carlyle
and Natty Bumppo, may be found in Mr. P.J. Farmer's "The Fabulous Family
Tree of Doc Savage."

2
Carter was very popular with Richmond's high society, being seen as something
of a catch himself, despite his dubious background. It was bruited about
that he was a war hero, having served heroically in the front lines or
perhaps behind them in the fight against the British. Few details were
available, however, and Carter would only smile cryptically when asked
about them. Ronald and Laurelyn did not approve of the match, but Whitney,
as with so many other things in her life, would go only her own way.

3 Carter
suffered from amnesia regarding many of the details of his early life,
to the point where he could not even remember his true age or his childhood.
Carter's intellect was not the equal of either of his brothers. While the
numerous blows to the head that John suffered during the Civil War and
during the many Martian battles he took part in are the more likely explanation
for these gaps in memory and dulling of the intellect, a potentially toxic
"elixir of immortality" might also be the cause.

4
There is at least one account by a Turkish survivor of the sack of Tripolitsa
(October 5, 1821) that mentions a sword-wielding black-haired “foreigner”
who tried to stop the independence-hungry Greeks from massacring the Turks
of Tripolitsa. If this “foreigner” was indeed John Carter, his participation
in the Greek War of Independence anticipates that of the Philhellenes by
two to three years. However, given the number of massacres that took place
during the War, and the barbarous fashion in which the Greeks treated those
Turks who were unfortunate enough to fall into their care, we can only
hope that John Carter was either elsewhere or considerably lessened the
treatment of the captured Turks.

5
Jack Carter is reported to have looked thirty years old until the day he
died. It is indeed a shame that so much of his life is unknown, as his
activities and the source of his extended vitality are interesting historical
curiosities. If we do not accept the Shoemaker hypothesis (see Footnote
13 below) as the explanation for his own vitality and that of his children,
then we are left to wonder what could have caused it. One line of discussion,
advanced on ExtScience-L by Dr. Eckert of the Berlinischer Polytechnicum,
focuses on the possibility of secondary exposure
by Jack Carter to the radiation of the Wold Newton meteor, perhaps through
a friendship with Sir Percy Blakeney or John Clayton, third Duke of Greystoke.
I thank Dr. Eckert for his permission to include this theory, as it constitutes
a section of his forthcoming monograph, “Secondary and Tertiary Effects
of `Exotic’ Radiation on Unshielded Humans, or, It Doesn’t Take A Spider
Bite.”

6
Consider that his only reference to it, in his (auto)biography, is a throwaway
reference in the first chapter to his commission. Most Confederate veterans
spoke with pride of their experience in the war. Why is Carter, who is
normally given to rodotomontade, so reticent? One clue might be the branch
of service he was a member of: the Cavalry. The Confederate Cavalry as
a whole was involved in a higher number of atrocities than other arms of
the Confederate army. It may be that Carter, deep down, was ashamed of
what he’d done or seen during the war.

7
Why John Carter did not return to the Carter estates in Virginia is something
of a mystery. As quoted, he saw himself as penniless, yet his own words
in A Princess of Mars (the colorfully-titled first chapter of his
(auto)biography) indicate that he had family:

"There was two little kiddies
in the Carter family whom I had loved and who had thought there was no
one on Earth like Uncle Jack."

Yet three sentences before he claims that
he had not seen his family for "years." If his situation after the war
was truly as desperate as he described, why not return to Virginia, where
his family was, presumably, waiting for him? If he has not seen his family
for years, how do the "two little kiddies" know and love him?

The only plausible explanation is that
John had been misinformed as to his grand-nephews' fate, and that he thought
that the fall of Richmond had brought the deaths of not just Nate and Jack,
but also of Ben, Jeremy and Walter. Such miscommunications between the
home front and the combat soldiers was common during the Civil War, and
John, as part of the cavalry, would have been particularly hard to reach.
His statement about not having seen his family for "years" may be an oblique
reference to his elder brother and that side of the Carter family, but
is most likely hyperbole and should be dismissed, although given the circumstances
under which he utters the statement it is certainly understandable.

8
An objection might be raised at this time that the genealogy related here
does not entirely match the account given in The Gods of Mars. According
to that book, Edgar Rice Burroughs himself was the narrator of the introductory
frame of The Gods of Mars and was John Carter's nephew.

However, the facts of ERB's life are well
known, and simply do not match up with the account given in Gods.
John Carter is, as stated, a Virginian, as is the narrator of Gods; ERB
was not a Virginian or even from the South, being a child of urban Chicago.9
John Carter refers to the narrator's "Uncle Ben;" neither of ERB's parents,
George Tyler Burroughs and Mary Evaline Zieger Rice, had a brother named
Ben. The narrator of Gods claims to have first met John Carter "nearly
thirty-five years before." That statement was made in 1898, according to
the internal chronology of Gods, meaning that ERB would have first met
Carter in 1864. ERB was born on September 1, 1875, and in 1898 ERB was
variously a soldier in the United States Army and the owner of a stationery
store, his movements and personal history very well-recorded during this
time. ERB simply cannot be the narrator of Gods.

That begs the question: Who, then, was
the narrator of Gods, if it wasn’t Burroughs? The book, like all
the Mars books, is credited to ERB, and the historical and literary
textbooks record him as having been their author. We are left with one
of two alternatives. The first is that Burroughs fudged the facts in Gods,
so that statements credited to Carter were never uttered by him. While
theoretically possible, too many other facts from Gods and the other “Burroughs”
Mars novels have been independently confirmed for us to casually dismiss
these statements and impute deception to Burroughs without more proof than
has been found.

The second possibility, and the one MN’s
research has established as most likely being true, is that the narrator
of Gods is Walter, the actual nephew of John Carter. As for why
Walter did not publish Gods under his own name, we must conclude
that some sort of arrangement existed between Burroughs and the Carters.
Burroughs, after all, published the first chapter of John Carter’s (auto)biography,
A
Princess of Mars. Perhaps Walter, aware in 1911 that the Carters’ wealth
was declining, sold the rights to Gods and the next two chapters
to Burroughs?

The actual authorship of the Mars
books–Carter’s (auto)biography–remains a mystery.

9
ERB disliked this truth of his own life; while both sets of grandparents,
the Rices and the Burroughses, were British who had immigrated to Massachusetts,
ERB concentrated on his mother's relatives who had settled in Virginia
in the 18th century, including "John Coleman." ERB, to himself, was
the direct descendant of Mary E.Z. Burroughs, a scion of the Old Dominion,
but the sad truth was that he was of mostly Yankee blood and a child of
Chicago, the hog butcher to the world.

10
Just why this is will remain, like so much else about the Carters' upbringing,
a mystery. Perhaps Jack saw more of Whitney in Simon's face, and treated
him with more care and affection because of that, and so instilled a kinder
set of ethics in him. Perhaps John sensed this slight favoritism towards
Simon on Jack's part and decided to rebel by becoming a mercenary, a profession
seen as lacking honor by Richmond's high society. It might also be that
the absence of a mother--Jack never remarried--left John to learn only
aggression, rather than any softness, leaving him an essentially and purely
masculine personality. Perhaps the culture of Richmond in the decades before
the Civil War left him with a sense that learning martial skill was preferable
to learning philosophy and ethics.

Or perhaps John was simply born to be a
fighter, and never scrupled with (to him) petty matters like the morals
of the side he chose to fight for.

11
This explains why John did not seek Simon’s help after the war or refer
to him in any way in his (auto)biography. The betrayal, as John must have
seen it, would have been so painful that John finally refused to admit
Simon’s existence, even to himself.

12
I urge all of my readers to write to the Army and demand the reclassification
of Simon Carter’s war records so that they may be attained by the FOIA.
The address is:

13
The point has been raised (by, among others, D. Shoemaker in his “Genetics
or Grit: A Brief Look at Extended Lifespans” in the New England Journal
of Extraordinary Science (v99n3 March 1987) that in the case of certain
very long-lived individuals, many of whom are members of the extended Wold
Newton family, a greatly extended lifespan (which Shoemaker defines as
both “life significantly prolonged [i.e., by four decades or more] beyond
the national average” and as “youthfulness in appearance, vigor, strength,
and sexual potency occurring past the chronological fifties and sixties
of an individual”) is directly linked to an individual’s willpower and
mental state, so that how an individual feels about himself and the world
has a direct influence on how long that individual physically remains in
his twenties and thirties. In other words, outlook and drive affect aging.
If this is the case, then Simon Carter is an outstanding example of this
theory.

14
The cynical reader might object that this is obviously impossible; Nicholas
would easily set the world record for weightlifting with this lift, and
that such an ability, done "with ease" by someone not trained in modern
weightlifting methods, is not creditable. However, Nicholas' feats of strength
are a matter of public record, and the cynical reader must simply accept
them as fact. MN, in an allusive but frustratingly obscure set of footnotes,
draws comparisons between Nicholas' strength and that of Clarke Savage
and of Nicholas' distant relative, Bingham Harvard. MN also refers to a
monograph on the subject of exceptional strength in the Wold Newton family,
but I have to date been unable to locate it.

15
A talent shared by his distant relatives Hamilton Cleek and John Clay,
among others.

16
It should be noted that Nicholas never grew taller than 5'4", while Clark
Savage Jr. grew to a much more impressive height. However, Clark was taught
a very special exercise regimen, one which would enhance his body while
not adversely affecting it in any way. Simon, on the other hand, was not
educated as Clark Sr. was, and therefore had no way of knowing what too
much of the wrong kind of exercise would do to the still-maturing body
of a teenager. Unfortunately, the exercises Simon put Nicholas through,
while building his strength to unheard-of levels, also stunted his growth,
leaving him eight to twelve inches shorter, as an adult, than his father,
uncles, and grandfather.

17
Nicholas’ comments about his father in his lengthy (auto)biography are
few after the first chapter, formal, unemotional, and almost perfunctory.
They read not like the heartfelt comments of a devoted son, but rather
like something written by a half-talented hack writer churning out penny-per-sentence
stories on a deadline.

We know that this was not the case, of
course. We can only conclude that Carter, exercising editorial control
over his (auto)biography in much the same way that Clark Savage Jr. would,
fifty years later, directed the publishers of his (auto)biography to rewrite
his words, removing the real emotion from them.

Why was this done? We can only speculate,
of course, and play laptop psychiatrists, but Nicholas’ relationship with
his father, as we shall see, engendered a combination of great affection
and an almost alienating idolization, a witch’s brew of love and insecurity
whose effect on Nicholas was marked. It should come as no surprise to anyone
that Nicholas did not wish his published comments on his father to betray
these feelings, or his real comments on his father to be known, and so
had them edited out.

18
Admittedly something of a cliché, but it truly is the most apposite
phrase for the traumatic events that occurred. Consider that, as far as
is known, Nicholas was raised in seclusion by Sim. Sim, from all accounts,
traveled widely with Nicholas, bringing him to a number of men and women
to be instructed in everything that might conceivably aid Nicholas in becoming
a better detective, But Nicholas seems never to have had real childhood
friends, his sole companion being Sim. Sim never remarried or (again, as
far as is known–there are limits even to the scholarship of one such as
MN) became romantically involved with another woman, so Nicholas never
knew what it was to have a mother–something he and his father and uncle
all had in common. (This puts Nicholas’...curious...behavior with women
later in life into perspective) Nicholas never attended an actual school
or college, never had his heart broken as a teenager by a woman (again,
as far as is known), and never went through all those experiences which
make up ordinary teenagers’ lives. It would seem that the only constant
in Nicholas’ life, and the only true, long-lasting source of friendship
and affection for him, was his father, making its removal that much more
upsetting....

19
As mentioned in footnote 17, the account of Sim’s death, and the description
of Nicholas’ reaction to it, are curiously muted. The only explanation
for this can be editing, as any other person would have been far more overtly
traumatized than was shown in the account given.

20
The friendship was genuine, but we might also see it as Carter finding
a father figure and responding to it, something he surely subconsciously
desired. As mentioned, the closest individual in Carter's childhood and
adolescence was his father, and Simon's sudden death must have left an
awful hole in Nick's life. Nick quickly made other friends, but he seems
to have had an affinity for older, capable, accomplished men such as his
father, and the desire for a substitute father figure is clear. Were it
not for the well-documented presence of women in his life we might speculate
on Nick's sexual orientation based on this affinity, but all evidence points
towards Nick being a well-adjusted heterosexual.

21
Unfortunately, the letters between Edith and Nick, which would provide
an invaluable glimpse into Nick’s psyche, are the property of the Blake
family, and they resolutely refuse to allow outside researchers to examine
them.

22
Consider the pattern of Nick’s life. His beloved father is taken away from
him by violence just as Nick has entered adulthood–a father, what is more,
whose drive to make Nick the best detective in the entire world likely
produced the “Football Father Syndrome” in Nick, where Nick is filled with
his own drive to excel but also with a haunting dread of failing the father
by somehow not succeeding. Further, Simon’s own status, as a well-respected
detective in his own right, could only have added to Nick’s insecurity
and suspicion that he would never quite be the man his father was. (The
reader is directed to F. Exley’s A Fan’s Notes for a salient example
of this phenomenon) Nick’s father is his only real friend; the experience
of friendship with an equal would have been almost wholly alien to him.
Nick’s exposure to women would have been minimal. Six years after the murder,
as Nick is becoming established (in his own mind) as an independent figure,
and one capable of and deserving of being loved, he meets a woman and falls
in love with her. Reportedly there was a strong resemblance between his
Ethel and Winnie Ludlow-Carter, whose portrait Nick had sitting on his
desk for many years. Then Ethel, Nick’s first love, is cruelly murdered.
Undoubtedly reeling from the shock, he flees (psychologically speaking)
into the arms of another woman, his closest female friend–and she is murdered
soon after the wedding. It is no wonder that so much of the recorded dialogue
of the NCDL is wooden and unconvincing; an accurate recounting of what
Nick said and perhaps did in the years following Ethel’s and Edith’s murders
would have been an unstinting litany of sadness.

23
One is forced to wonder at a person who could so rapidly go from being
the potential victim of sexual abuse to falling in love with one’s victimizer,
but that fits the pattern of relationships in Nick’s life. He seems to
have always been rash and quick to love; hardly a mortal sin, but a dynamic
that leads to long-term happiness. To paraphrase the Bard, Nick Carter
“loved not wisely but too well.”

24
Quartz died in Sing-Sing in 1932 immediately following a visit by Sir James
Blake of Scotland Yard. Quartz’s death was suspicious, but Blake’s reputation
was beyond reproach, and there was no evidence beyond the very circumstantial
of his involvement. It was later discovered that Sir James was Edith Blake’s
nephew, but the New York State Police somehow never got around to pursuing
this crime any further....

25
Chickering Valentine is an interesting case. He began service with Carter
as a callow fourteen-year-old, an uneducated orphan with few skills. He
ends it, in 1927, well into middle age, still serving as Nick Carter’s
assistant but with an extremely impressive resume and a list of skills
second only to Chickering Valentine. Yet very little attention has been
paid to this man.

The primary reason for this, of course,
is his complete disappearance after Carter’s retirement in 1927. While
there was undoubtedly nothing untoward about it, Nick Carter’s steadfast
refusal to comment on what his adopted son might be doing has always raised
some questions. MN’s investigations have turned up nothing so far, but
then, a man with such skill at disguise (he learned from the best) and
so many contacts around the world could easily vanish.

More interestingly, his background before
meeting Nick Carter was never revealed–not in Nick’s (auto)biography, at
least. How was it that this man of such achievement and experience was
orphaned and working at a ranch in Nevada? Where were his personal guardians?
In this case, at least, MN was able to draw some interesting conclusions.

Chick Valentine was left as a newborn at
an orphanage in Carson City, Nevada on Valentine’s Day, 1872. The detective
Deadwood Dick had passed through Carson City nine months before and stayed
a few days at the local brothel, so it was commonly thought that Dick was
the father. MN has found nothing to contradict this conclusion; given Dick’s
fecund lifestyle, it is entirely likely that Chick was his son, making
his eventual step-mother, Ethel Ackermann, his sister. (For more information
on Dick’s numerous offspring, see the next article in this series.)

Interestingly, exactly three years before,
on Valentine’s Day, 1869, another recently-born child had been left at
the orphanage’s steps. Nine months before that, Deadwood Dick had stayed
in town for a week, and so that child, like Chick, was given the last name
of “Valentine.” (Deadwood Dick’s last name was not widely known) That child,
James Valentine, grew up to become one of the nation’s most proficient
safe-crackers, unknown to the public at large but widely known and cursed
by law enforcement officials. Valentine retired in 1909 after moving to
Elmore, Arkansas and changing his name to “Ralph Spencer” and marrying
Annabel Adams, the daughter of a local bank manager.